Distinguishing between Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi: A Reassessment of the Overlap in their Artworks

Attributions for a number of paintings have oscillated between Orazio Gentileschi and his daughter, Artemisia. The predominant tendency in recent scholarship has been to give these disputed paintings to Artemisia during the time of her education, possibly when still supervised by her father. Here it is argued instead that most of these paintings are by Orazio, or at least of his invention, and those that are by Artemisia were perhaps done later, when she returned to Rome – and to her father’s studio – rather than during her teenage years. To provide a basis for such an argument, all of Orazio’s known extant works from c.1600, when he established himself as an independent artist, until 1621, when he left Rome never to return, are recatalogued. The shape of a catalogue for Artemisia’s entire career is then drawn up, to show better how her personal sensibility always differed from her father’s. And various new attributions, as well as reattributions, are proposed along the way.